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Friday, November 28, 2014

The Islamic State, the Al Nusrah Front, the
Islamic Front, and Junud al Sham have been showcasing camps in Iraq and
Syria that are being used to indoctrinate and train children to wage
jihad. The groups have recently advertised a number of training
facilities for children, including one located in Ninewa province in
Iraq and others in Aleppo, in and around the Islamic State's
self-proclaimed capital of Raqqah, and other areas of Syria.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Nuclear talks with Iran have failed to yield an agreement, but the
deadline for a deal has been extended without a hitch. What would have
been a significant crisis a year ago, replete with threats and anxiety,
has been handled without drama or difficulty. This new response to yet
another failure to reach an accord marks a shift in the relationship
between the United States and Iran, a shift that can’t be understood
without first considering the massive geopolitical shifts that have
taken place in the Middle East, redefining the urgency of the nuclear
issue.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Although outwardly more liberal than the Saudis, the Qataris have surpassed them as financiers of extremism and terrorism.
U.S. officials reckon that Qatar has now replaced Saudi Arabia as the
source of the largest private donations to the Islamic State and other
al-Qaeda affiliates.
Qatar, the world's wealthiest country per capita, also has the
unsavory reputation for the mistreatment and effective slavery of much
of its workforce.
Leaders of Western states threatened by jihadi advances are happy to
sit down with the largest financiers of terrorism in the world, offer
them help, take as much money as they can, and smile for the cameras.

Mehdi Hassan is the fourth British man from the coastal city of Portsmouth to be killed
while fighting for ISIS in Syria. Hassan was just 19 when he left with
four friends for Syria in October 2013. They named themselves the
"Britani Brigade Bangladeshi Bad Boys." Four of the five have been
killed.
Much of the media has, over the last few years, attempted to explain
why British Muslims are being radicalized, and why some wish to fight
for a terror group known and feared for its brutality.
Some commentators blame the darker corners of the internet; some point to the supposed glamour and glory of war, and others attribute part of the blame to "government policy" and the "persecution" felt by British Muslims living in a country allegedly full of "anti-Islamic feeling."
Those concerned with the practical workings of radicalization,
however, look to the initial involvement of Western recruits to ISIS
with extremist preachers and organizations. Even while crediting the
allure of the internet, it seems improbable that anyone would join a
cult or extremist group without some encouragement or introduction.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's Islamic State, the al Qaeda offshoot that controls large portions of Iraq and Syria, has claimed to have beheaded yet another Western hostage,
along with more than a dozen captured Syrian soldiers. In a
newly-released video, a henchman for the group stands over what appears
to be the severed head of Peter Kassig, a former US Army Ranger turned
aid worker who was kidnapped in Syria in late 2013.
From the Islamic State's perspective, such videos serve multiple
purposes. They are meant to intimidate the organization's enemies in the
West and elsewhere, show defiance in the face of opposition, and to
convince other jihadists that Baghdadi's state is the strong horse. Al
Qaeda, the Islamic State's rival, long ago determined that graphic
beheading videos do more harm than good for the jihadists' cause, as
they turn off more prospective supporters than they earn. But the
Islamic State has clearly come to the opposite conclusion, cornering the
market on savagery.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Jabhat al-Nusra, like the Lebanse Shi'ite organization, is emerging
as a movement that combines uncompromising jihadi ideology with tactical
flexibility. Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamist group which constitutes
al-Qaida's "official franchise" in Syria, this week carried out a
successful offensive against Western-backed rebel militias in northern
Syria. Key areas were captured.
Islamic State and its activities further east continue to dominate
Western media reporting on the war in Syria. But in northwest Syria,
Lebanon and the area immediately east of the Golan, it is Nusra which is
becoming the main Sunni jihadi force on the ground.
There are significant differences in the praxis of these two
movements, despite their near-identical ideological stances. Islamic
State prefers to rule by straightforward terror – see its slaughter of
322 members of the Albu Nimr tribe north of Ramadi this week.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Washington seems to have abandoned its Levant remodeling map for
another. However, the failure of the first project and the strength of
the Syrian people do not bode well for the implementation of this new
plan. Thierry Meyssan reviews the adjustments it requires and the
division it has created within the coalition: on one side, the United
States, Israel and Saudi Arabia, on the other, France and Turkey.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

In the wake of US-led air strikes on an
Islamic State (IS) convoy near the Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday, media
have been awash with rumours that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was
killed or injured.

The apparent silence of IS sources on the issue could be evidence
that something has happened to al-Baghdadi. But there was a similar lack
of official IS denial of rumours that the group's spokesman, Abu
Muhammad al-Adnani, had been killed in air strikes earlier this year -
something that later turned out to be unfounded.
A Twitter account purportedly belonging to Adnani has claimed
Baghdadi should be on his way to a speedy recovery, but the account is
almost certainly fake, as it refers to Adnani in the third person at one
point. Were it real, Twitter would have deleted it some time ago,
having cracked down on all traces of an official IS presence on its
platform.

Friday, November 14, 2014

US Central Command
[CENTCOM] attempted to distinguish between the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda's
official branch in Syria, and the so-called Khorasan Group in yesterday's's
press release that detailed airstrikes in Syria.CENTCOM, which directs the
US and coalition air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
denied that the five airstrikes targeted "the Nusrah Front as a
whole" due to its infighting with the Syrian Revolutionaries' Front, but
instead claimed the attacks were directed at the Khorasan Group."These strikes were
not in response to the Nusrah Front's clashes with the Syrian moderate
opposition, and they did not target the Nusrah Front as a whole," CENTCOM
noted in its press release.

Friday, November 7, 2014

The
so-called "Arab Spring" had its start between December 2010 and
January 2011; since then the Middle East and North Africa have been at the
center of major social and political changes that in many cases ended up in
total chaos and war, as it is still nowadays in Syria and Libya and with
important repercussions in Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia and Egypt.

The
United States gave full support to those branches of political Islam linked to
the Muslim Brotherhood such as the FJP in Egypt, Ennahda in Tunisia, while in
Syria the Islamist group was trying to establish their own militia and gain
influence in the armed struggle against Assad. [1] [2]

According
to Gulf News sources, the US have been maintaining close relationship with the
Muslim Brotherhood, organization that is banned in Russia since 2003 due to its
links to Chechen terrorists in the Caucasus and that has also recently been
banned in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

What kind of relations do the jihadists of northern Sinai and Gaza
have with Islamic State, and with Hamas? Egyptian President Abdel Fattah
al-Sisi declared a three-month national emergency this week, following
the killing of over 31 Egyptian soldiers in a suicide car bombing
carried out by jihadists in northern Sinai.
No organization has issued an authoritative claim of responsibility
for the bombing, but it comes amid a state of open insurgency in
northern Sinai, as Egyptian security forces battle a number of jihadist
organizations. Most prominent among these groups are Ansar Bayt
al-Maqdis and Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen; the attack on the Sinai
military base came a few days after an Egyptian court sentenced seven
members of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis to death for carrying out previous
attacks on the army.

The current snapshot of the Islamization process in the Balkans is of interesting nature nowadays, by taking into account the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the vicious war ignited by the "ISIS-Islamic State" in the Middle East.